


4 times Harry was Sorted and the world that resulted - and the 1 time he never made it to Hogwarts

by TourmalineQueen



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 5 Times, AU, Gen, comment-fic, what if
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 09:53:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7043308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TourmalineQueen/pseuds/TourmalineQueen





	4 times Harry was Sorted and the world that resulted - and the 1 time he never made it to Hogwarts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tigriswolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigriswolf/gifts).



1) Slytherin

Harry Potter didn't refuse the Hat's first offer. He didn't care for Draco Malfoy any more than Malfoy cared for him, but House solidarity meant that they remained civil - or at least not at each other's throats. The House Master had it in for Harry, so none of his year mates, or those above or those below him cared to risk Snape's moods should they be seen with the Potter boy. Solitude suited Harry. He studied harder and worked harder to please his House Master, frequenting the Forbidden Section of the library under the guise of his father's old cloak to learn those secrets of which the teachers wished students to remain ignorant.

When he heard the call from the tunnels beneath the school in his second year, however, he followed them, traversing hidden passages that even his Marauders' Map didn't know about, and gaining a secret pet basilisk. 

When in the fourth year his name emerged from the Goblet of Fire the House celebrated, and for the first time, Harry Potter realised that popularity was a heady thing. The better his performance in the Tasks the more powerful he felt. When he and Cedric Diggory's body emerged from the TriWizard Cup Portkey, he reported to Dumbledore that escapees from Azkaban had spearheaded the attempt to sabotage international relations.

When he saw the Thestrals at the beginning of his fifth year, for the first time Harry Potter went to visit the Gamekeeper. He learned all about the keeping of the majestic beasts, ignoring the talk of cursed ones who see them. Harry Potter did not care for Dolores Umbridge, but saw the potential for becoming a Prefect and later Head Boy should he get on her good side. Immediately he reported on students making use of the Room of Requirement (as if he had not already discovered several other, similar rooms in walled-off or forgotten corridors or the school) and earned the trust of the vile woman.

In his sixth year, Harry Potter discovered more of the history of Tom Riddle, and decided to speak to him via the diary which Harry Potter had kept all these years.

In his seventh year, Harry Potter defeated The Dark Lord Voldemort and assumed his place.

2) Ravenclaw

Beneath the Sorting Hat, Harry Potter asked the Sorting Hat "What if I just want to learn?" The Sorting Hat immediately shouted out "RAVENCLAW!" 

Harry Potter made friends with difficulty, but immediately alerted his Head of House that all was not right with Professor Quirrell. Flitwick dismissed this as new-student nerves, until an off-target wingardium leviosa in the Great Hall levitated Quirrell's turban. Flitwick and Snape shared the duties of Defence Against The Dark Arts classes the rest of the year, while Quirrell was transferred to the most secure part of St Mungo's. No more was heard of Voldemort subsequently.

Harry Potter became a successful auror and had little difficulty in participating in Professor Dumbledore's quest to rid the Wizarding World of surviving Horcruxes, and made a successful campaign to erase all literature concerning the creation of Horcruxes in the future.

3) Hufflepuff

"I don't want to be noticed, please place me somewhere I won't be the centre of attention," Harry Potter begged the Sorting Hat.

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

The house erupted into cheers to have The Boy Who Lived join their company. It was easy for Harry to make friends. He was a decidedly average student until the exam years came along, at which point he worked his arse off to get Outsanding in all his subjects. Hufflepuff began performing remarkably well at Quidditch.  
Instead of Divination he took Muggle Studies, which allowed him to doss and still keep his grades up. When Mad Eye Moody joined the school in Fourth year, Harry felt the new DADA teacher was observing him closely, and made sure not to do better than Exceeds Expectations. Barty Crouch reported to Voldemort that his nemesis would be a simple object to remove. Harry cheered for Cedric along with the rest of the House and School - his name never was placed in the Goblet, and so never emerged. Durmstrang won the TriWizard Tournament, with Beauxbatons and Hogwarts tying respectably for second place. 

When Harry was given by Slughorne a secondhand copy of the Potions textbook with handwritten notes, he practiced the handwritten instructions in private, but made sure to follow the textbook instructions only in class. Professor Slughorne asked him to join his Slug Club for a dinner to talk about being The Boy Who Lived but was otherwise uninterested in the distincly average student.

Harry Potter killed Lord Voldemort in a duel and gave credit to Neville Longbottom. After Voldemort's fall, Harry returned to Hogwarts to complete his education.

4) Durmstrang

Durmstrang

When Harry Potter was eight years of age Vernon Dursley was transferred to Copenhagen. When Harry turned eleven, a letter arrived in the post offering free residential tuition for Harry Potter. Vernon Dursley was skeptical, but Petunia decided that since it hadn't arrived by owl it wasn't from her sister's lot, and that perhaps a military school might beat the badness out of him. The fact that it was without fees clinched it in Vernon Dursley's mind, and so, off to the middle of nowhere, Scandinavia, went Harry Potter.

In Durmstrang, Harry Potter learned modern European languages, ~~maintenance and use of magical Tall Ships~~ , as well as Charms, Potions, Illusions and defence against the Dark Arts. When he was in his third year, Harry visited Gringotts branch in Tromso, and used some of the money to buy a few things that he wanted. When he went back to the Dursleys for the summer, Vernon and Dudley were quite taken aback by the massive pet snake that Harry allowed loose in his room - did it have THREE HEADS? - but Petunia dismissed it as normal teenage rebellion. The fact that Harry didn't bother with electric lights, or even candles, and indeed seemed to prefer the late night darkness was something that made Petunia wonder, a bit.

Harry and Viktor Krum became friendly rivals on the Quidditch team. Harry was asked to play on the Danish national team on occasion, refusing any match against Bulgaria on principle. When Durmstrang sent students to Hogwarts, Harry and Viktor were part of the group. When Neville Longbottom's name emerged from the TriWizard Cup after Cedric Diggory's, Harry warned Krum not to win everything, that something seemed distinctly "off" about the whole business. 

Harry Potter excelled at a number of classes that neithe Beauxbatons nor Hogwarts would ever dream of offering. Elemental magic, Force magic, even magic that works on the human mind - magics that Tom Riddle never even knew existed. When confronted by Voldemort, Harry used the strongest of Entropic magics to drain the life out of the being that had murdered his parents in cold blood.

5) Never Made It To Magical Education

As a child, Harry Potter loved visiting the reptile house in the Zoo, and looking at the little pet snakes in snake shops. In his imagination the legless reptiles all spoke to him. After Dudley Dursley pestered Vernon and Petunia to get him one (so Harry couldn't have it) the snake escaped its tank on a daily basis, and was always found in the cupboard under the stairs, with Harry hissing at it, as if pretending to talk with the snake, as if the snake was his "friend" (and Petunia infused the word with every ounce of condescension in her body). 

Nothing "weird" or "odd" or "like your mother or that dreadful Potter fellow" ever happened, (occasionally strangers wearing odd attire would ask to shake his hand, but Harry had been brought up not to speak to strangers, so that stopped by the time he was about eight or so) except for that business with the snake, which eventually Petunia and Vernon ignored because "every boy needs one friend" and even Dudley didn't complain when the still-growing python and its tank became Harry's by default. He'd been bored of the thing after about a week, anyway, and had hung onto it only because Harry seemed to want it. With his parents' blessing he stopped caring that his "toy" was now his cousin's pet.

When Harry turned eleven nothing out of the ordinary happened, except that a very nice Birthday letter arrived from someone named "Minerva McGonagle" along with a second letter to Vernon and Petunia, offering a placement at a boarding school in Scotland should the Dursleys not wish to pay to educate their ward, but Vernon wanted Harry "where he could see he wasn't learning any weird nonsense" and sent him to the same comprehensive as Dudders.

Sometime shortly before the end of the school year an odd little man wearing a turban arrived at the school looking for Harry. Harry, who had been showing his pet to his class, came to the principal's office with the python draped over his shoulders. While the little turbaned man spoke to Harry about all sorts of weird things, the snake crossed the room, slithered up the odd little man's legs and torso before beginning to constrict around him. Harry ordered the snake to stop, but the snake informed him that the little man had only bad intentions for him, and the little man looked shocked as he realised that the Squib was a Parselmouth. He was dead before Harry could do anything, and his body, along with the deformity on the back of his head were taken from the school to a secure location by the police.

Nothing more was heard of He Who Shall Not Be Named in the Wizarding World, and The Squib Who Lived defeated the Dark Lord armed only with a snake and his wits.


End file.
